Canada Day Long Weekend

...and a "long" weekend it promises to be. I won't be on the Hill watching fireworks this year, but in Ottawa nonetheless packing up the house. No more living in three cities at once. Hooray!

Anyway, I have no time to write anything of significance in time for Canada Day, but thankfully others do.

Andrew Coyne's column scratches the surface of the some of the most basic questions confronting the administrative relationship of convenience that we call Canada, while Margaret Wente raises some of her own in her "254 solitudes", at least some of which is a partial response to the ridiculous Friday column by Michael Temelini. I anticipate Temelini's column will draw several responses by Monday. Stay tuned.

Just in time for Canada Day

My oh my. The condescending Townie crap from the editorial pages of the Telegram is starting to soften.

Urban St. John's voters who will elect any dog as a nationalist Tory candidate are sophisticated patriots.

Rural voters who tend to vote Liberal are "voting with their wallets", in "pragmatic recognition (of) federal dollars".

Oh well. At least they aren't calling us heathen treacherous baymen bastards anymore.

I guess this is progress.

Oh, and...

In response to something I read somewhere this week, where some blogger had a clever list debunking the similarities between the Blair-Brown transition, where the Prime Minister handed over the reigns to his longtime rival the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to a similar transfer of power that took place in Canada not-so-long ago...

...are any of Tony Blair's friends returning from Belize to serve 42 months in jail?

A Churchill Falls Limerick

A despot in search of a mission
Was foiled in his bid for transmission
Aloud he cried "F*ck it -
I'll sell to Pawtucket!"
and so begat ten years of wishin'.

Yawn. Now Williams wants to join the States.

Premier Danny Williams has been afraid, for the better part of four years now, of raising the issue of Equalization at meetings of First Ministers, or those "Council of the Federation" wankfests. For years he either clammed up or stormed out... anything to avoid revealing the lack of support he had around the table, despite his regular press releases back home bragging of the contrary.

Suddenly, he's keen to chat about it. To a room half-filled with Americans who couldn't give a damn.

Later, when U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins gave a briefing to the premiers and governors, Williams made it clear he realizes his opinions are not appreciated in Ottawa.

"You wouldn't be interested in acquiring a new state by any chance?" Williams asked the U.S. representative.

CBC News

They're probably not. And I doubt they're looking for another desperate blow-hard governor, either.

I wonder how much Equalization Danny Williams would have gotten from Mr. Wilkins if he asked. I wonder how much the "state" of Newfoundland would recoup in royalties? I wonder how much of an "equity position" he'd get.

Really. This charade is starting to get a little tiresome.

You would think, at a meeting partly devoted to the future transmission of cleaner energy along the Eastern seaboard, Danny Williams might - just might - have something else to talk about. It would have been a great venue to discuss his "go-it-alone" route to deliver hydroelectricity to Ontario, New York, Massachusetts etc. or an ideal opportunity to provide Eastern North America's leaders a peek at what a natural gas regime might look like.

Nope. Williams has become a one-trick pony. His rhetoric is now beyond pathetic. Williams has a legitimate grievance, but it's with the Prime Minister, not with the country as a whole. Stubborn remarks about leaving Canada aren't going to win him any support amongst a population already growing tired of Harper. They're starting to grow just as tired of him.

Selective electoral fishing

Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn is denying Labrador Metis access to a summer food fishery for salmon.

Maybe that's a smart thing.

Afterall, scientists from his department are advising him that the salmon stock is threatened. And if a stock is threatened, you really can't open up a fishery.

The funny thing is, just last week, Loyola Hearn opened - with great fanfare - a similar food fishery for North Atlantic cod, all around the province. He did so despite the advice of the very same DFO scientists.

His excuse for opening the fishery was twofold. To quote the erstwhile Minister:

1. "Fishing for cod is an important part of Newfoundland culture."
2. "People in our province have shown that they will fish responsibly."

Clearly, the "people in our province" must not include the Metis in Labrador. Or else the Metis in Labrador have not "shown that they will fish responsibly". The only other possibility is that the advice of his own Department is worth considering in an Opposition-held riding in Labrador, but can be completely ignored when it comes to saving his own political bacon by pandering for votes in his neck of the woods, where fishermen claim "stocks in inshore areas are healthy enough to sustain" such a fishery, and a commercial effort as well.

So if the word of fishermen in his own riding is ample evidence to override the advice of the scientists in his own Department, why isn't the word of Metis fishermen on the Labrador coast worthy of equal consideration?

Is this a blatant show of politcal opportunism on Hearn's part?

Or is it outright discrimination?

By that I mean, "Are salmon more worthy of departmental protection than the lowly cod?"

I wouldn't dare suggest that the fishermen in Loyola's riding are more worthy of...

Finish that sentence as you see fit.

Henry VII's legacy alive and well...

June 24 - Discovery Day, or St. John's Day.

The rest of you can call it St-Jean-Baptiste, Fete Nationale, or whatever, but for us, today marks the 510th anniversary of John Cabot's discovery of the island of Newfoundland.

It's also the tenth anniversary of a former Premier touching the Queen's Royal bum in Bonavista, to the disdain of the British press. But I digress.

Anyway, in honour of the 510th anniversary of Cabot's discovery, here's an excerpt from Prowse's A History of Newfoundland, describing the disposition of King Henry VII (pictured above) on granting the Italian sailor a charter to explore the North Atlantic on behalf of the English sovereign:

"The records show that the monarch gave him very little encouragement...he was prepared to grant the Genoese a charter, but on the condition that he was to have a royal share of the profits, but on no account to bear any of the expenses"

Hmmm... little encouragement, a royal share and no expenses.

509 years and 361 days later, the Globe and Mail writes:

"For his part, the Premier insisted he would not compromise on his demand for a 4.9-per-cent stake in the project, and for a royalty rate that rises with global crude prices."

Intergovernmental affairs

With the clock winding down on the last Question Period of this Parliament, Canadians were treated to a cameo appearance by the former Clean Air Act princess, one-time Environment Minister and current Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Hon. Rona Ambrose:

"Mr. Speaker, we have had negotiations and talks with the Quebec government and other provincial governments on the federal spending power."

- June 20, 2007

Earlier this week, Dan Arnold asked the following pivotal question at Macleans.ca:

"...what exactly does Rona Ambrose do in Ottawa?"

My Grade 4 English teacher taught us that a dictionary is always helpful when confounded with such difficult questions.

in·ter·gov·ern·men·tal /ˌɪntərˌgʌvərnˈmɛntl, -ərˈmɛn-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-ter-guhv-ern-men-tl, -er-men-]

–adjective

involving two or more governments or levels of government.

af·fair əˈfɛər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-fair]

–noun

1.	anything done or to be done; anything requiring action or effort; business; concern: an affair of great importance.

2.	affairs, matters of commercial or public interest or concern; the transactions of public or private business or finance: affairs of state; Before taking such a long trip you should put all your affairs in order.

3.	an event or a performance; a particular action, operation, or proceeding: When did this affair happen?

The question isn't "what exactly is she doing in Ottawa?" The real question is "what exactly is she doing everywhere else?"

If our Intergovernmental Affairs Minister has engaged in, as she called it, "negotiations and talks with the Quebec government and other provincial governments on the federal spending power", then surely one of the ten provincial governments in this country has record of such "talks" and "negotiations". And surely, in a federation in which the division of powers is one of the most sensitive and important Constitutional discussions that our nation's governments can possibly engage in, there must be one Premier or provincial minister somewhere who's willing to tell Canadians what they think of these negotiations, what their position is, and how they think they're going.

Afterall, as Ambrose's colleague, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty describes it: "the long, tiring, unproductive era of bickering between the provincial and federal governments is over."

If "negotiations" and "talks" about the power-sharing relationship of the country are genuinely happening, shouldn't someone, somewhere be asking some pretty simple questions about them?

Surprise, Surprise

As another session of minority parliament in this country winds down, here is a great reminder of how - in a minority - every year is an election year. Let the pandering begin!

OTTAWA, ON Today, the Honourable Loyola Hearn, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), announced a recreational groundfish fishery for all inshore waters around Newfoundland and Labrador and the continuation of a small scale inshore northern cod stewardship fishery for 2007...

Also, a limited Northern Cod Science and Fisheries Stewardship fishery will also continue in 2007...

A three-week stewardship cod fishery for all areas of 2J3KL will open on July 2, 2007 and a second season will take place sometime after September 7, 2007. The second session will be negotiated on a bay-by-bay basis* with industry.

It is truly sad, as we near the 15th anniversary of the cod moratorium, that an announcement like this warrants absolutely no debate among politicans of any stripe, or of any office.

"As recently as this spring, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans** status report on cod off Newfoundland's northeast coast said the stock is in such poor shape it's difficult to even estimate its size. However, Hearn and other politicians have been pressured by fishermen who say stocks in inshore areas are healthy enough to sustain a commercial fishery." - CBC

Maybe Hearn and all those fishermen are right. Maybe every scientist and environmentalist has it wrong. That's possible. I wouldn't know. Undoubtedly that's what the open line shows would say.

But surely there must be one politician in the province, a mayor, an MP, an MHA, a retired cabinet minister, an aspiring candidate, a Tory, a Liberal, a separatist... just one politician, someone, anyone... who's willing to question the logic behind this.

I guess they're nearly extinct, too.




* "negotiated on a bay-by-bay basis" = Tory poll captains, you have work to do!
**As a side note, why does Loyola Hearn spend so much time bleating about wanting more government jobs in his province if all he does is ignore their advice? It's his own Department for crying out loud. What's the point?

Some things never change

News item - Vote buying will remain alive and well and legal in Newfoundland and Labrador for at least one more election.

Trials and tribulations

Ok -If, like me, any of you are getting a little sick of the daily updates from the Conrad Black trial, I strongly suggest the daily updates from the Phil Spector trial instead.


The LA Times is blogging it daily. Sa-wee-eeet!!!

They'd make pretty wicked cellmates, I think.

On "Sponsorship"

"We will also sponsor initiatives that take old, polluting cars off the road, and introduce a Green Levy on gas guzzlers."

- Jim Flaherty, March 19, 2007

"The federal Conservatives, who are awash in cash after several years of successful fundraising, are sponsoring a car on the Canadian NASCAR circuit."

- The Globe and Mail, June 18, 2007

Ssssshhhh

From CBC:

MacKay denied Ottawa has ripped up the accord, saying Nova Scotia has the option to keep it while benefiting from a new equalization formula that would be worth an additional $95 million to the province this year and $64 million the next.

"We're not playing that up because it grates on other provinces," he said.

There you have it. This government's modus operandi from the very beginning. Say one thing in one province, say another in the other provinces. Whatever it takes. Say anything.

And try your best to make sure the other provinces don't hear about it.

On a first name basis

Remember the big fuss about Williams calling the PM "Steve".

"...I can call him Steve. I'm not a buddy of his."

Well, now he's calling the Nova Scotia Premier "Rodney".

"I can't track what Rodney is doing... On Friday, Rodney was getting the deal done, then on Saturday and Sunday he was out of it..."

Of course, the fact that everyone in his own province refers to him as "Danny" makes this whole I-insult-you-by-calling-you-by-your-first-name-out-of utter-disdain-for-you routine a bit nonsensical, if not a little juvenile, no?

Equalization, Harper, Williams, etc., etc. ad nauseum

I've been too busy to write anything that does this subject justice. But the closest I probably came was here, in comments posted in response to Andrew Coyne's column. As per usual, it is replete with typos, etc. but have a read.

Here's an excerpt:

First, the Accords of the mid-1980s DID allow for certain amounts of the resource revenues to be shielded from this purported "clawback" through off-set provisions. This is not a new thing. In both accords, these offset provisions were set to a declining scale. The argument 20 years later in Nova Scotia was that they had triggered the declining value of those provisions prematurely with a small natural gas development, well ahead of the Sable project coming on stream. In Newfoundland's case, it was more a matter of the province's economy tanking in the 1990s that made the impact of first oil simply maintain the province's fiscal capcity, rather than propelling it to the levels so gleefully promised by Crosbie, Peckford et al.

What is not in question, however, is that the federal government followed these accords to the letter. In fact, they sweetened the deal for the provinces by introducing a "generic provision" in the equalization program which allowed provinces with incomparable revenue streams to exempt 30% of those revenues from the Equalization calculation OR choose the going rate of their Accord off set provision. They even allowed the provinces to make that election after the fact, so they would never lose out by making the wrong choice in the face of fluctuating commodity prices, production values, etc.

Still, when facts aren't written about, mythology prevails, and soon enough, politicans of every stripe were counting things like the federal government's collection of sales tax and EI premiums as "stealing" the provinces' oil money. It was preposterous, but any proposition supported by all and renounced by none quickly becomes gospel. Even today, papers regularly wriet about the "billions" collected by Ottawa, when in fact, they collect zero in royalties. Except of course, the Hibernia Holding Corp., a crown corporation created to save the first major project from dying for lack of a willing partner. Fat chance the feds will ever get credit for that. But I digress.

That being said, there is a legitimate reason for Newfoundland and NS's oil and gas resources to be afforded special treatemt. Primarily it is because, unlike the oil and gas industry on land, the investment required for entry into this field is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Unlike Texas or Alberta, where there is room for small investors, land speculators, and property owners (think Beverly Hillbillies) the only exploratory and producing interests in the offshore are big oil. NL and NS will only ever realize royalty income, and whatever spinoff industry activity the local market will provide. Hence the desire to maximize royalties and the provisions in all of these projects to maximize local contracts for everything from catering to diving, to fabrication and supply. The chances for local equity investment in the production side of this industry are virtually nil.

Here again, the provinces have defeated the premise of ther own argument. The argument that offshore revenues were "different" was a sound one, but now that they've thrown their lot in with Premier Calvert in Saskatchewan they've put their own argument on shaky ground.

Similarly, after spending years arguing for a ten-province standard (when oil prices rose), these provinces were essentially saying that they wanted Alberta's fiscal capcity (from oi revenues) included in the calculation of the national average. Yet here they are three years later holding Harper to a promise to remove those very same revenues from the national calculation. Again, either position has merit, but when you argue both in the span of three years, you look a bit ridiculous.

Today was the first time in five years that any national columnist gave this issue a good write up. It is long overdue. Although I have to wonder, if columnists like Simpson and Coyne thought this was a stupid idea from the get-go, why didn't either of them say so when it was first uttered? Why silence during the 2004 and 2006 campaigns? Why nothing when the premiers met? Weird how they can have such grounded ideas to write about today, yet had nothing to say for four years on the matter.


UPDATE to my posting of yesterday (see below) - I note that my mocking of Jack Layton's press release has borne results. They edited the words "Saskatchewan Accord" out of the release.

It now reads as follows:

“First they said they would protect the Atlantic Accord, and they broke that promise,” said NDP leader Jack Layton. “They said they wouldn’t punish MPs who voted against the budget, and then they expelled Bill Casey. Now they’re daring the provinces to take the federal government to court. This is no way to run a country.”

Again, there's an error. There are two Atlantic Accords. Of course, there used to only be one, as the NS deal was previously called the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Agreement. But as per usual, central Canadians have a hard time remembering the names of all of us.

That's some way to run a country.

Notable Quotable

From the NDP website:

“First they said they would protect the Atlantic and Saskatchewan Accords, and they broke that promise,” said NDP leader Jack Layton. “They said they wouldn’t punish MPs who voted against the budget, and then they expelled Bill Casey. Now they’re daring the provinces to take the federal government to court. This is no way to run a country.”

All sounds well and good, but anyone notice anything?

I offer a generous* reward to any reader who can find me a copy of this "Saskatchewan Accord"

*used golf balls, surplus pens, and whatever other junk I find while cleaning out the third floor. That kind of generous. i.e. Harper generosity.

Caption contest

Comedy

Direct quote from an Op-ed piece written by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in yesterday's Halifax Chronicle-Herald:

"But there should be no misunderstanding: Our government is not in the process of making any side deals for a few extra votes. You cannot run a country on side deals. Equalization has been restored to a principles-based program for the first time in many years. That’s what all premiers asked us to do and that’s what all Canadians expect us to do."

Direct quote, from an article posted just hours later on the Nova Scotia CBC website:

Nova Scotia's premier says he is prepared to sign a side deal with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the Atlantic Accord, even if Newfoundland and Labrador does not. Rodney MacDonald said Friday he is making progress in negotiations with the federal government, and that he will sign any deal that is good for Nova Scotia. "I will sign a deal that's a Nova Scotia deal," MacDonald said.

Dumb headlines

If it's only going to one person, it isn't really "out" is it?

Cannon fodder

With the move of 6,000 yet-to-be-identified public servants from Ottawa to Gatineau, dead-man-walking Lawrence Cannon is a happy, happy man.

"The era when the Outaouais was neglected by the federal government is over," said Mr. Cannon. (Ottawa Citizen, May 30, 2007)

Cannon’s quote shows he couldn’t contain his glee.

With a little digging, it appears it doesn’t contain the truth either.

Despite previous declarations about their distaste for government ownership of real estate and their adamant objection to moving government jobs around as political candy, Canada's New Government has suddenly embraced Pierre Trudeau's objective of ensuring that 25% of the Capital region's public servants will work in Gatineau... by building two more office complexes and shifting however many public servants across the river as politically necessary.

Makes sense. Or does it?

Thanks to figures readily available at Statistics Canada and the Public Service Commission (and a regular reader who sent this along) we're happy to provide the following fact check about Lawrence Cannon's era of neglect:

In early 1993, at the tail end of the Mulroney years, public sector employment in the national capital region included 19,051 employees on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, and 58,608 in Ontario, in other words, 24.5% (QC) and 75.5% (ON)

By the end of Kim Campbell’s short reign, those figures were 18,201 and 55,466 or 24.7% and 75.3%. (The reduction on both sides probably owing to Benoit Bouchard’s and John Crosbie’s bloated staff leaving town, but I digress…)

Throughout the Chretien years, during periods of program review and deficit reduction, employment on both sides fluctuated, with the Hull/Gatineau figure reaching its lowest in the second quarter of 1998 at 14,714 employees, while Ottawa bottomed out one year later in 1999 at 40,780 employees. In the fourth quarter of 1999, 27.7% of the capital’s public service worked on the Quebec side of the river, and 72.3% on the Ontario side.

At the end of 2005, the last month under Prime Minister Martin, federal public servants in the National Capital Region numbered 20,213 in Gatineau and 53,917 in Ottawa, or 27.3% and 72.7%, respectively.

So… given that public sector employment grew in the Outaouais from 24.5% to 27.3% during the span of Campbell/Chretien/Martin eras, despite several years of expenditure reduction, when did this “era of neglect” begin?

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Then there's Lawrence Cannon.

Goon

If this guy weren't a Norris trophy contender he'd have been called not once, but twice, for these cheap shot after-the-play hits to the head. Both times in plain view of the refs, and twice with no penalty call. Good on the NHL for suspending the d***head for the second time in two weeks.

Watch it here.

Pronger's rap sheet with his six previous suspensions is here.